7 Ways Drug Addiction Can Affect Your Lifestyle

Drug addictions can have a major effect on your health and on your lifestyle. Many people know about the former, thanks to commercials and rehab-based televisions shows. Certain drugs can cause you to lose weight. Depending on the drug, you might end up with track marks and messed up veins. You could end up with heart disease or lung problems. These are just some of the physical effects of drug addiction. It can affect your lifestyle as well. Here are seven examples.

1) It may cause short-term mental illness.

Some drugs, especially psychotropic ones like acid and mushrooms, can cause short-term mental illness. You could end up with drug-induced anxiety attacks, extreme paranoia, and may even begin to hear voices. Other drugs, like heroin and cocaine, can cause mood disorders. You might go through extreme highs and lows, suffer from impulsive behavior, or even become seriously depressed. In most cases, these mental illnesses will vanish when the drugs wear off, but in others, you may have to go through a rehabilitation program to let them work their way entirely out of your system before the illnesses are cured.

2) You’ll be isolated from your family and friends.

Drugs cause isolation. You’ll begin to lose your family and friends for several different reasons. Either they won’t want to be around you because they can’t stand to watch you suffer and put yourself in the throes of drug abuse, or you’ll become unreliable. You’ll break plans, isolate yourself, and begin to think that you don’t need anyone but your drugs. Some drugs, like heroin, cause extreme lethargy, so you’ll end up breaking plans and staying home to enjoy your high. If you suffer from a short-term, drug-induced mental illness, this isolation can be exacerbated by what you think your brain and the drugs are telling you.

3) You may begin to sell off your possessions to support your habits.

If your previous lifestyle involved collecting high-end goods, like clothing and electronics, your drug addiction could take them away from you. How, you might ask? Well, you’ll need to pay for your drug habit somehow. These items will end up getting sold through online auction sites, through listings on Craigslist, and through pawn shops. You might even end up trading some of them for drugs, by physically handing them over to your drug dealer. Also, if you cease to pay your car loan or mortgage, and instead spend that money on drugs, then those items will end up getting repossessed. The downward cycle is very bad.

4) You could lose your job.

Yes, your lifestyle could be greatly affected by drugs when you lose your job. Would you want a worker who showed up high, was twitchy and unable to concentrate, or who fell asleep at their desk? All of these are causes for dismissal. As you go deeper into your drug addiction, the drugs will take over, and working will no longer become a way to pay for your drugs – you have the items you can sell off for that. Instead, your job will be the one place where you can’t do drugs, so you’ll end up calling in sick constantly (leading to dismissal) or quitting outright.

5) You’ll stop exercising.

If you previously loved to exercise, then that will stop when the drug addiction takes over. Depending on the drug, you’ll either lack energy or focus, both of which can keep you motivated and on track. Any exercise program that you previously followed will go out the proverbial window. If you owned an expensive exercise bike or treadmill, you might end up selling them for drugs. Your gym membership will be canceled for non-payment since you’re spending that money to feed your habit. Sure, you could go out running, but that’s time away from your drug of choice.

6) You may quit following a healthy diet.

Some people love to eat a healthy, balanced diet, full of fruits and vegetables. Drug addiction can take that away. Most drugs sap your appetite, leaving you not hungry. As a result, you won’t eat, and when you do, you’ll only have the time and energy for quick meals and junk food. That healthy diet filled lifestyle will cease to exist.

7) Your entire way of life may change.

To put it simply, suffering from drug addiction can change your entire way of life. You’ll go from the person that everyone knows well – the person with friends, close family, a good job, and nice things – to someone who no longer had all of these things. You’ll become someone else entirely. The only thing that you’ll want is your next fix. All of this may seem extreme, but it’s true. Drug addiction can entirely overtake your life and ruin your lifestyle.